Quite a number of games have been teased for the PS5 over the last several months, but Solar Ash is one that has a lot of people in the gaming community curious. During the most recent State of Play, Sony unveiled a lengthy gameplay trailer for Solar Ash that shows off quite a lot.
Solar Ash was rumored to be in development for quite some time, but it wasn't officially unveiled until last year. Since then, the game has been on the radar of numerous indie game fans, but sadly, not much by way of official news for the game has surfaced, let alone official gameplay. Fortunately, that has certainly changed as of today.
During PlayStation's State of Play event for February 2021, a new gameplay trailer for Solar Ash was unveiled and it is visually stunning. The level of graphical polish, aesthetic, and color composition is breathtaking, to say the least. In addition, from what was shown of the gameplay, the movement looks incredibly fluid and fast-paced and manages transition in and out of combat seamlessly.
Although, what was arguably the most surprising thing shown during the trailer was how different the game looked both mechanically and visually compared to Heart Machine's previous title, Hyper Light Drifter. Instead of the open and expansive 3D world present within Solar Ash, Hyper Light Drifter featured a top-down, 2D, pixelated aesthetic and possessed gameplay mechanics with next to no similarity to what was presented in Solar Ash.
To go from a top-down, 2D adventure game with game mechanics decently similar to Hades, to a 3D action platformer is quite the turnaround. Then again, this massive departure from style and gameplay may work favorably for Solar Ash, at least based on what has been shown off so far. Heart Machine is still a decently new studio and it's possible that the studio just wants to experiment in as many directions as possible.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Solar Ash. An official release date for the game still wasn't unveiled, but it is still slated to release sometime in 2021. Hopefully, additional news regarding the game's development continues to surface. Given that the game is being published by Annapurna Interactive, a studio that has an incredibly impressive track record in terms of successful games, it seems like Solar Ash could be on the fast-track to becoming a must-have title for 2021.
Solar Ash will release for PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 in 2021.